The Classical Doctrine of Indian Medicine: Its Origins and its Greek Parallels c7.s2.93

c7.s2.93

The Waters:—In the Veda, the waters play a cosmic role to a considerable extent. They constitute the condition for the march of the universe and of the life of beings; they are also the Mothers (*ambī*) par excellence (*RV.*, I, 23, 16); the immortality is in them (*amṛta*, ib., 19). Celestial or terrestrial, they correspond from one world to another, the rivers of this lower world having a replica in the sky. In the beginning, all was only “water without form”.² Being the essential principle of the world, they must have been later on naturally considered not only as a vivifying liquid but again as one of the primordial elements of microcosmic organism.